


Chasing All the Stars

by aeragroa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jegulus, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Starchaser, jily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:53:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29711928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeragroa/pseuds/aeragroa
Summary: And James Potter fell apart in the arms of his fiancée, on the kitchen floor of his parents’ house, grieving the death of his first love.Inspired by Chapters 164 and 165 of All the Young Dudes by MsKingBean89
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Regulus Black/James Potter
Comments: 24
Kudos: 94





	Chasing All the Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [All the Young Dudes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10057010) by [MsKingBean89](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsKingBean89/pseuds/MsKingBean89). 



_And I keep calling you but there's no answer_

_Just a multitude of questions left to chance_

_And I don't know why you keep saying things will be alright_

_I know these storms will come, let it rain let it pour on me_

_You're my umbrella in a raging sea_

_I won't give in to the insanity, chasing all the stars_

James woke up late that Sunday morning. It was rare to have a day that Moody didn’t have an assignment for him and Lily, and he had been up the night before going through paperwork in his dad’s office. So he woke up late that morning, but not very late. Still earlier than anyone else in his house. Sleep had been difficult to grasp onto lately and while he had vowed to figure that out soon, it would have to wait until his to-do list was a little shorter. He didn’t want to think about when that might be though, what would have to happen for his responsibilities to diminish.

He stumbled into the kitchen after crawling quietly from his bed, careful not to wake up Lily. She refused to go to sleep while he was still up working, and normally he would have argued with her about it, but he enjoyed her presence. The war had him feeling like any moment of peace and comfort was stolen time. He was determined to steal as much time as he could with the woman he loved, but he also loved her enough to let her sleep in.

So James Potter sat down to breakfast that morning alone.

He eyed the morning paper in the middle of the kitchen table, the post owl must have come early. He considered not reading it. It was his day off after all, but he knew that in war there were never truly any days off. After a few silent moments, and a few bites of toast, James relented. At least if he read it he could give Lily the highlights—she hated reading it more than he did. But she would have to, because James would not be reading the paper that morning. At least, he wouldn’t be reading past the first headline.

_Black Heir Confirmed Dead_

Lily found James sitting on the floor in the kitchen, arms on his knees, head against a wall, eyelashes wet with tears he forbid himself from spilling. The chair he’d been sitting in was toppled over on its side, but he couldn’t remember how it got that way. He also couldn’t remember how long he’d been sitting there, replaying every conversation and fight he’d ever had with the dark haired Slytherin boy.

Lily stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the state of her fiancé. Her face went pale and when she spoke he could not tell if the hollow sound was from not talking yet that morning, or from the horrors of the possibilities running through her mind, “Your parents?”

James shook his head, feeling incredibly guilty for scaring her, “They’re sleeping.”

A look of relief crossed Lily’s face, followed quickly by confusion as she approached him. James knew what she was thinking. The past few months had been hard and he knew his excited nature had dimmed a bit with the stress, but he wasn’t one to break down. Lily had only seen him cry a handful of times. When he found out that his parents were sick, when they had decided to get married during a war, and…

Lily must have realized it then. If it wasn’t about his parents, and it wasn't about her… understanding settled on her face, as well as poorly concealed dread. “What did he do?”

At her words, a tear slipped past his defenses. He didn’t answer, just looked across the kitchen floor to where he must have thrown the paper at some point. Lily followed his line of sight, and _accioed_ it. He watched her carefully as she read the article, likely searching for anything that would be important for them to know. At some point she must have read something that made her upset because she breathed hard before whispering, “ _Incendio.”_

James gasped desperately as he watched the paper burn. As the embers floated away and the smoke vanished, he finally met Lily’s eyes. They were filled with so many emotions, which James thought was good because he was having trouble deciding what he should feel. Torn between grief and anger, he didn’t know which to choose. Before Lily had walked in he was thinking of landing on apathy, but now her eyes reflected back to him the reason he had fallen in love with her in the first place. She knew how to hold conflicting emotions in perfect balance. Anger and empathy, resignation and determination, disappointment and sorrow. James considered each of these feelings as if Lily were presenting them on a silver platter. Mentally, he reached out and touched each one, experiencing it for a moment before moving on to the next when it became too painful. Finally, he came to a conclusion. A completely nutter one he knew, but it was true for him in that moment, “It’s my fault.”

And James Potter fell apart in the arms of his fiancée, on the kitchen floor of his parents’ house, grieving the death of his first love.

“Shh,” Lily ran her fingers through his hair. “You know that’s not true.”

He didn’t know anything.

When he could finally breathe again, he laid his head against her chest, listening to her heartbeat and letting it ground him. “I always told him to stand up to his family.”

“You don’t know that he actually did.”

“Because You-Know-Who is killing model death eaters now?”

Lily didn’t have an answer for that.

“I told him to stand up to them. He said—he told me—,“ James’s voice broke and he took a deep breath. “Now he’s dead.”

He started crying again but Lily moved his head off her chest until he was looking her in the eyes. She held each side of his face in her hands, wiping his tears with her thumbs, “What did you tell me, when I first found out about you and Reggie?”

James choked on another sob at the sound of his name. Lily continued to stroke his cheek, “Hmm? I asked you if you still loved him, and you said you thought you always might. And then I asked you why you decided to walk away. Why not stay and fight for the person you love? What did you tell me?”

James focused on the green eyes in front of him, trying to drown himself in memories of hexes in the hallways and late night patrols instead of the darkened broom closets and fights on the quidditch pitch that were currently swirling through his brain. “I had to realize it wasn’t my job to save him,” he whispered.

“It wasn’t. And I think you did realized that. I think it’s what helped you move on, helped you love me without holding back. It wasn’t _your job_ to save _his soul_ … but maybe you did, anyway.”

James blinked at her.

Lily looked away, thinking for a moment before she continued, “You don’t know what happened. And there’s too much at stake right now for you to drive yourself crazy thinking of all the possibilities. But maybe there’s one that’s worth entertaining… just for a moment.”

James threaded his hand in hers as he waited for her to find the right words.

“What if everything you said to him, every fight you had… what if it stuck with him? And when you walked away, what if he couldn’t stop thinking of all the reasons he lost you? What if he sat in death eater meetings, being given tasks and being challenged to prove his loyalty, and he couldn’t get your voice out of his head? And what if one day he decided that you were right, and it got him killed?”

Tears were running down James’ face again as he considered everything Lily was suggesting. “So maybe it was your fault he died, but that’s not as heartbreaking of a thought as you think it is because it means that you did save his soul. Or, at the very least, you pointed him toward how to save it himself.”

James closed his eyes and kissed the hand Lily still held against his cheek. He wanted so badly to believe the words she was saying to him. “What do I do now?”

“Now, you realize that it wasn’t your job to save his _life_.” When James opened his eyes they were dry, and he could tell by the look on Lily’s face that the time for entertaining this scenario was over. “And you pull yourself together, because you have a best friend who is much less emotionally aware than you are and he needs you to tell him the same thing.”

James squeezed Lily’s hand and nodded his understanding. He had a job to do. Right now his feelings didn’t matter. The story Lily had spun was a nice thought, but it was just a story and he knew better. Sirius didn’t. While James had found closure for his relationship with Regulus years ago, there was a door that Sirius had left open to his old life, hoping that Regulus would find it and walk through. Sirius had never given up on the idea that he would have a relationship with his brother again.

As if summoned by the shift in conversation, Remus’s voice began calling through the mirror in James’s pocket.

“Prongs?! Prongs!”

Lily wiped his cheeks again and kissed him on the forehead before he opened the compact. Trying his best to appear concerned for his friend instead of completely shattered inside, James assured Remus he was on his way. Lily said goodbye to him by the fireplace. 

“Go do what you need to do.” She smoothed down the hair on the back of his head, something she always did when she was worried about him, “Then come home.”

He kissed her in promise, knowing the amount of time he could hold it together was already ticking down. As the green flames engulfed him, he could have sworn he saw Lily wipe a tear from her eye.

**Author's Note:**

> The song at the beginning is 'Chasing All the Stars' by Fleurie.


End file.
